Classic Rabindranath Tagore – Complete and Unabridged

Complete and Unabridged Arresting, Powerful and Moving – The Best Loved Movels of Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore experimented with form in his novels and was bold in his choice of subjects. This omnibus edition brings together the Nobel Prize winner’s most popular novels in translation. It is a collection that will be loved and treasured.

A grain of sand (Chokher Bali). The Shipwreck (Noukadubi), Gora, Quartet (Choturanga). Home and the World (Chare Baire) Nexus (Yogayog), Farewell Song (Shesher Kabita). The Garden (Malancha), Four Chapters (Char Adhyay)

Born in 1861, Rabindranath Tagore was a key figure of the Bengal Renaissance. He started writing at an early age, and by the turn of the century had become a household name in Bengal as a poet, a songwriter, a playwright, an essayist, a short story writer and a novelist. In 1913 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and his verse collection Gitanjali came to be known internationally. At about the same time he founded Visva Bharati, a university located in Santiniketan, near Kolkata. Called the ‘Great Sentinel’ of modern India by Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore steered clear of active politics but is famous for returning his knighthood as a gesture of protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919.

Tagore was a pioneering literary figure, renowned for his ceaseless innovations in poetry, prose, drama, music and painting, which he took up late in life. His works include novels; plays; essays on religious, social and literary topics; some sixty collections of verse; over a hundred short stories; and more than 2500 songs, including the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.

Rabindranath Tagore died in 1941. His eminence as India’s greatest modern poet remains unchallenged to this day.

Sreejata Guha has an MA in comparative literature from State University of New York at Stony Brook. Apart from Tagore, she has translated works by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Saratchandra Chattopadhyay, Saradindu Bandopadhyay and Taslima Nasrin for Penguin.

Sunanda Krishnamurty is a literary translator and a teacher. She has worked as a college lecturer in Delhi and has published articles in professional journals. She has co-authored Dictionary of South and Southeast Asian Art, and has translated into English a collection of Tagore’s short stories entitled Monihara and Other Stories.

Radha Chakravarty teaches English literature in Gargi College, University of Delhi. She has co-edited The Essential Tagore for Harvard and Visva Bharati, and is the author of Feminism and Contemporary Women Writers (Routledge, 2008). She has translated several of Tagore’s works including Gora, Boyhood Days, Chokher Bali, Farewell Song: Shesher Kabita and The Land of Cards: Stories, Poems and Plays for Children. Other works in translation include Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s Kapalkundala, In the Name of the Mother by Mahasweta Devi and Crossings: Stories from Bangladesh and India. She has edited Bodymaps: Stories by South Asian Women and co-edited Writing Feminism: South Asian Voices and Writing Freedom: South Asian Voices.

Kaiser Haq is a poet, translator and essayist who was educated at the universities of Dhaka and Warwick. He has been a Commonwealth Scholar in the UK and a Senior Fulbright Scholar and Visa Fellow in the USA. He is professor of English at Dhaka University, where he has taught since 1975.

Hiten Bhaya, a former member of the Planning Commission, was also chairman, Hindustan Steel, and director, Indian Institute of Management. Apart from Yogayog, he has translated Tagore’s writings on language and linguistics into English.

Malosree Sandel completed her doctorate and has worked in a premier college of Kolkata as a senior lecturer. She has translated Tagore for a hospice in the USA and is currently based in Manchester.